It’s getting dark; they’re still at the wading pool. That’s what July is for. In Fargo we spent our summers at the Harry Herbert Hoover Heever Howland Municipal Chlorine Tank; it had a wading pool for babies and main pool whose bottom sloped off at an alarming angle-if you were small and unsure of your swimming skills, that is. The moment your feet couldn’t find the bottom, you had a glimpse of life itself and the things to come. It also had two diving boards, a short one for cannonballing-which was prohibited – and a tall diving platform, which seemed nine miles high. This was Fargo in the 60s, and I’ll never forget it -the rough feel of the concrete under your bare feet, the basting girls, the machine that dispensed ice cream sandwiches in sharp-edged metal sleeves, and whose treasures were often lost because you poked the treat into the far reaches of the sleeve as you attempted to extract it….

You know what I really want to do? Hit the road. Head up Highway Ten again, go back to Fargo. It’s not summer without Fargo. It’s not summer unless I stand on the old streets and walk around and look at the grand old movie marquee at the head of Broadway and recall how I saw “Omega Man” there, walk past a building that wouldn’t know me from Adam but once held a coffee shop in the basement where I went once to scribble some peevish mewlings in my journal. If you grow up in a small town, your love is inevitably unrequited. Which is why you return, the grey swain, flowers in hand. Remember me?

Now I happen to have four tickets to the Kenny Chesney concert in Cleveland Stadium next Saturday, July 14. I will send them to the best effort to photoshop James Lileks back to the ’60s –whether as a preteen in Fargo or during his infamous Summer of Love days in San Francisco.